Author Archives: David C. Henderson

Statutes and court decisions concerning disability and handicap discrimination frequently give credence to a lament (mostly by employers) that the laws of the workplace are too complicated to be managed on a day-to-day basis without continually calling on an employment ...

An employee claiming employment discrimination or retaliation under Massachusetts state law frequently can defeat the employer’s summary judgment motion merely by providing evidence, at a critical phase of analysis, from which a reasonable jury could conclude that the employer’s stated ...

Last July, shortly after former Gov. Deval L. Patrick signed a bill purporting to create for Massachusetts a domestic workers’ bill of rights, his press release announced that the new law would “extend basic work standards and labor protections to ...

On July 7, the U.S. secretary of labor filed an amicus brief asking that a federal appeals court defer to the Department of Labor’s test for determining whether a trainee or intern is covered by federal minimum wage guarantees. The ...

On July 14, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released its first comprehensive update on pregnancy discrimination enforcement guidance since 1983. The new publication, “Enforcement Guidance: Pregnancy Discrimination and Related Issues,” and the accompanying Q&A document and fact sheet address the ...

On May 23, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals released an opinion explaining in detail yet another way in which an employer can be held liable when sexual discrimination is allowed to infect the workplace. The lessons from the ...

An employee claiming “associational discrimination” alleges being mistreated because of the employer’s animus toward the protected status (e.g., race, sex, disability, etc.) of someone with whom the employee associates. Associational discrimination claims are well established in parts of federal employment ...